Sugarcane belongs to a grass plant of the genus saccharum, which is easy to grow and available at cheap prices. Sugarcane juice has no fats and is loaded with abundant carbohydrates, proteins, minerals like calcium, phosphorous, iron, zinc, potassium, vitamins A, B-complex, and C, sugarcane juice is refreshing and has many health benefits including instant energy booster, ensuring safe pregnancy, preventing bad breath and tooth decay, curing Febrile disorders, aiding liver functions, acting as a digestive tonic, combating cancer, aiding people suffering from diabetes, treating sore throats, healing wounds, strengthening body organs, preventing DNA damage, aiding weight loss, eliminating toxins, treating UTI, good for nail heath, increasing muscle power, treating acidity, and boosting immunity. In addition, cold sugarcane juice is refreshing because of its delicate fragrance.
Furthermore, sugarcane is one of the important crops used to manufacture several types of sweetener such as white, refined, brown and raw sugar. However, sugarcane juice is easy to be spoiled and fermented due to microorganism contamination. If left outside of the refrigerator for 15 minutes, sugarcane juice would have adverse effects on the stomach and intestines. If prepared in unhygienic conditions, sugarcane juice may lead to diarrhea and other illnesses. Yeasts, decomposition bacteria, and pathogenic bacteria such as salmonella can contaminate sugarcane juice during the extraction process. Therefore, there have been many attempts to preserve sugarcane juice. Most artisan farmers use a simple crusher consisting of two or three metal roller, operated by diesel power, to compress the sugar cane and extract the juice. For preservation, the extracted juice is boiled in open pans at high temperatures between 89° C. to 92° C. until soluble solid contents near to 70 Brix. The concentration of soluble solids in the juice increases the temperature, exceeding 100° C. Just before of the syrup solidification, the temperature is ranging between 118 to 125° C., and the soluble solid content of syrup is higher than 88 Brix.
However, this well-known method of extracting, sanitizing, and preserving sugarcane juice are inefficient. First, the prior art sugarcane juice extracting mills do not have high extraction efficiency due the design of the crushing rollers. The extraction efficiency of the prior art sugarcane juice extracting mills ranged between 40% to 61% at operating speed of 0.3 m/sec. In order to obtain the maximum amount of juice from a given amount of sugarcane stalks (kg per extraction), the same stalks have to be milled repeatedly. The same sugarcane stalks have be ran through the crushing rollers many times to make sure all of the juice are extracted. This causes large chunks of pulps to fall into the juice, consumes more energy (kg/hour), lowering the output capacities and throughput. Besides, this method creates more opportunities for microorganisms to contaminate the juice. More than that, it is difficult to add other flavors such as orange juice, kumquat juice, herbs, etc. to the traditional sugarcane juice extracting mills. Second, preserving the sugarcane juice by boiling at high temperatures will cause it to lose a lot of nutrients, color, and it delicate fragrance. If fact, boiling sugarcane juice creates sugar, which is different from the original sugarcane juice. Adding acidulant and preservatives to preserve the sugarcane juice from microorganism affects the juice color and taste, causing final consumers to turn it down.
In the traditional vacuum freeze drying method (lyophilization), temperature and vacuum are controlled to achieve sublimation and desorption of water vapors from the product. In addition to avoid changes in the dried product appearance and characteristics, drying by sublimation can yield a product that has a short reconstitution time with acceptable potency levels. However, the traditional vacuum freeze drying method usually reduce chemical stability of high-water content products such as sugarcanes.
Therefore, what is needed is a method and a system that can convert extracted sugarcane juice to concentrated powder which is chemically stable, has a long shelve life, short reconstitution time with excellent potency levels—the original fragrance, nutrients, vitamins, color are preserved.
What is needed is a system that includes a sugarcane extracting apparatus that has a high extraction efficiency and high output capacity.
What is needed is a system that are fully automatic, i.e., controlled and observed by a controller unit or a computer that can create optimal freeze drying conditions for sugarcanes.
What is needed is system that can provide a high rate of cooling so that the microscopic structures of sugarcanes are preserved.
Yet, what is needed is a system that can provide specific settings including eutectic temperatures (Teu), optimal temperatures (Topt), pressures, and cooling rates for sugarcanes so that structural collapse can be avoided.
Finally, what is needed is a sugarcane composition powder that includes probiotics so that it is easy to digest after reconstitution by mixing with water.
The method and system disclosed in the present invention solve the above described problems.